Agenda item

To seek agreement to proceed with the commissioning intentions as set out in the report and to re-commission Early Help services in 2016.

Cabinet received a report on the reassessment of Early Help and Preventative Services contractual and grant arrangements intended to ensure a flexible and integrated model of support would be in place to achieve the best outcomes for children and young people and the most efficient use of resources.

The report outlined the proposals for future commissioning intentions, including the realignment of approaches with Public Health to ensure maximum utilisation of resources and integrated approaches to service delivery and sought agreement to progress as described

Florence Kroll, Director of Early Help and Preventative Services and Joanna Hook, District Manager; Gravesham Early Help and Preventative Service where in attendance to speak to the item.

The Cabinet Member for Community Services, Mr Mike Hill referred to the Youth Commissioning element of the report for which he was responsible.  He reported that a significant proportion of these services had first been commissioned out three years ago and the results had been generally successful, providing a greater quantity of high quality youth work than before whilst also saving the Council money.  It was now time to recommission these services and the redesign if approved would put in place 12 district based contracts compared to the 47 currently in place, which would enable easier and better contract management.  He was pleased that smaller providers had been encouraged to collaborate in order to compete for the larger contracts and was convinced that this would protect good service already in place.  Finally he welcomed the fact that the budget for youth services had remained unchanged despite the considerable pressures on the Council’s budget.

The Cabinet Member for Specialist Children’s Services, Peter Oakford welcomed the report which he felt reflected the excellent work undertaken to review the current grant and contractual arrangements and improve the offering and efficiency of Early Help and Preventative Services in Kent and he fully supported the direction of travel set out within it.

Florence Kroll described the contents of the paper for members which had been informed by significant diagnostic phase, undertaken over the last 6 months and including stakeholders, young people, providers and staff in both Early Help and Preventative Services and Social Care.  This period had established that the highest number of referrals related to family work or emotional health and wellbeing.

The proposed realignment would see the current complex contractual arrangements aligned to become 12 district youth contracts, 1 young carers contract, 4 family contracts and small local grants to be awarded with districts in order to continue to support small, local arrangements.  In order to ensure that the work was aligned with Public Health commissioning for emotional health and wellbeing the contracts would be commissioned in two phases as follows:

·         Phase 1 – The 12 District youth contracts and the young carers contract would be awarded in April 2016 along with implementation of arrangements for small grants

·         Phase 2 – The 4 Family contracts would be awarded in October 2016.

She reported that the budget was £8.5million reducing to £7.4million and included all of the budgets in scope which would be allocated as set out in the report at paragraph 5.1.

It was hoped that this proposed framework, whilst still supportive of smaller, local services, would be better aligned to other services, more accessible to users, have reduced waiting times and facilitate more straight forward contract management.

In response to comments from the Leader Ms Kroll confirmed that she and Thom Wilson had worked together on the commissioning intentions contained within the report. The Leader welcomed the intentions set out and suggested that the expected outcomes be clearly set out and monitored by the appropriate groups as the contracts were awarded and work undertaken.  To facilitate that, he requested a report to a future meeting of Cabinet detailing those expected outcomes in more detail.

It was resolved that: